My name is Shiny, and I’ve been spending time at Horatio’s Garden South West.
I’ve been interested in photography since I was sixteen, when I bought my first camera. I did photography professionally for a short time, working for a photography company shooting weddings – in the day when the wedding was 20 or 30 pictures, you were given two or three rolls of film and expected to have a 95% success rate! Later on in life, I did more commercial work, taking photos of furniture, which was more technically challenging. Both types were extremely stressful – a wedding only happens once, and a commercial client would always have fixed expectations. Then, later in life it became more of a hobby, more of an escape from reality.
When I arrived at the garden, I tried to be engaged in every project that I could. Photography was just one of those projects, initially. But, when I began chatting with Hilary Stock during one of her workshops, I realised that we were on a very similar wavelength – she was not in the business of photography, but in the art of it, although you can combine the two.
Together, we had one or two ideas. The latter idea was an arrangement of apples which are principally one colour, but that are not perfect. I wasn’t looking to manufacture a perfect image, but one that has a real feeling of reality, of truth, and is inherently honest – not manipulated to a point where it loses any sense of reality.
My favourite thing is to pursue – or push – an idea as far as I can. When you do this, you can realise in the execution that your idea doesn’t meet your expectations, it doesn’t have the natural harmony that you thought it would, or it is more challenging than you realised. That initial inspiration is crucial to me – perhaps you start with a suggestion, an idea, task, or comment which sets your mind in motion. Then, it becomes up to you to interpret that idea as best as you can and generate a photographic projection of that idea. You need to ask yourself; what type of image do you want to portray? Dark, or light? Humorous, or sincere? Is it a case of trying to communicate an idea subconsciously? Or is it an idea and nothing more. This kind of thinking is crucial to your execution. Perfection is great, but a picture should have soul, and if it doesn’t cause a reaction, like empathy or anger, then you haven’t fulfilled your original idea.
The apples are a big visual element in the garden – the trees, the way they’re aligned, when they’re in flower early on in the season, when the wisteria next to them comes out, the way that they are designed as a tunnel, the water feature next to it – they become everything. They encourage lots of wildlife, then later in the season they become small apples, and as they are now there is a vibrant show of colour – the contrast between the greens, reds and oranges is tremendous. The apples become a good visual reference, but there is also a physicality to the arches which gives it presence. They’re not just part of the seasons, but they sustain things in the garden – they are used for cooking and pressing.
I’m doing photography in the garden because it’s an escape from the routine of the hospital. Even though some of these routines are both essential and desirable. Some people, like myself, want to go to the gym at every opportunity – but that is a stress-inducing part of the day because you are keen to push yourself as best you can. Photography provides more of a mental challenge, although it can be a physical challenge for most of us here, so there is still an element of mental reward from achieving something.
Taking pictures makes me feel a whole range of emotions, from elation when you’ve got the image that you thought of originally, or when it exceeds your expectations, and frustrations when things don’t go according to plan – when you’re working towards an image and that elusive element, that je ne sais quoi, that bit that will connect with other people, is missing. Most of all, whilst I have been here, photography has been invigorating me. The other workshops too, but I resonate with photography most of all.
In the workshops, and in my recovery in general, it is important that I do one thing that I haven’t done previously, or try to improve that skill. This could be physically, like using a knife and fork, holding a camera, but it could also be mentally – photography expands my knowledge, and talking about it with people can lead me to another idea. It’s always just one small step towards something else. One of the simplest challenges you can set is to see somebody else’s work and try to replicate it – and I don’t mean by photoshop! Achieving the same effect using the camera and light is a far greater struggle than most people realise.
Like I said, I used to treat photography as an escape – I would go to the mountains in Scotland or abroad and lose myself in the wilderness to get away from London or wherever I was working. I could literally lose myself. To a degree, that’s how I feel in Horatio’s Garden – your mind is focusing on the project at hand and you are distracted from your current situation, whatever that may be, and you are lost in what you are doing.
